Halfway Down the Path to Enlightenment

It felt so good, the recoil. Every time he pulled the trigger, it gave him gooseflesh. The muffled pops pushed through his ear protection. They were poignantly welcome. He knew she wouldn’t understand. She was always afraid of things she didn’t understand, and he could never explain it to her.

He could see her face, the expression of confusion and frustration as he tried to share this with her. Sometimes she could look so frightened. He hated when she was afraid, especially of him. The third consecutive shot missed the target. He sighed in frustration.

He put the pistol down on the table. A tiny mantra formed on his lips and tongue-always with an eye upwards, always with my feet on the ground. He said it twenty more times, breathing in deeply, out completely, eyes closed. The sounds around dissipated. Focus returned. He thrust another clip into the grip. “One hundred more rounds,” he thought. “One hundred more explosions. The birth of one hundred more tiny universes.”